The Last Goodbye
by shakes8
Summary: "Together or not at all, Robert. You said it yourself," I say, and pull the trigger. Everyone knows Robert Frobisher killed himself. But what if Sixsmith walked in on him about to do the deed?


_Robert Frobisher_

I settle into the bathtub. 4:45. The Luger feels comfortable in my hand. Where I was once clutching it so tight my knuckles were white, now it sits, warm in my relaxed hand. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. My pocketwatch ticks, seeming to count my seconds, mockingly. I pull it out and look at the tarnished silver, my initials for what I decide will be the last time. _R.F._ How many times have I signed letters that way, letters to my dear Sixsmith. 4:46. Fourteen minutes now. Fourteen minutes of anticipation. Early for once in my life. Let them not say I was late for my own funeral. I close my eyes. Soon they will not be mine, they will be the earth mother's again. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I will return to the earth only to be jolted from my slumber into a new body, a new life, with no memory of this one. Good. The only thing worth this life is the sextet. My sextet. They will remember it as a man's death. Only I will know it as a man's life. For that is what it is. It is my life, written neatly in measures and bars, it contains everything, even my dear Sixsmith. I close my eyes and remember us, curled up together under the Corsican stars. Our anomaly silent in the dark. How I wish he was here now, but I would not bring that upon the true love of this short and dark life. How I wish he was here to hold my hand, tell me it is all alright, guide me up, stop me. But he cannot, will not. I am to die today, here, in this bathtub, at five 'o clock sharp. 4:50. Ten minutes.

_Rufus Sixsmith_

I stand on the balcony of the Hotel Memling, thinking, wondering. Frobisher, my Frobisher, he said he came here every day. He probably is, must be hiding, the bastard, my love. He's always been stubborn. A rustle behind me. I turn, expecting to see a cat or bird, but it is him! He was watching me! I decide quickly to pretend I didn't see him, but to follow him to surprise him. He goes down the many flights of stairs and I have no choice but to follow. I follow him through several halls of rooms, but the skinny little devil disappears as I am stopped by a member of the housekeeping staff.

"Excuse me, but are you checked in, sir?" she asks.

"You can't arrest me, I'm afraid. I'm with that man that just went by, a Mr. Robert Frobisher. Business associate," I reply, flustered.

"Another composer," she says under her breath, "Room 106. First right, second left."

"Thank you," I say, but she turns and goes about her work, muttering about worthless composers. I follow her directions to the room, and knock, only to find that the door isn't locked or even completely shut. I walk in.

"Robert? Are you in here, Robert?" I ask. No reply. I hear a rustling from the bathroom. I walk into the bathroom to see him. He's in the bathtub, he has a gun in his mouth, and I run to him.

_Robert Frobisher_

5:00.I am ready. All of a sudden I hear the door open. I thought the hotel manager paid off housekeeping not to come here!

"Robert? Are you there, Robert?" I hear Rufus Sixsmith, of all the damned people in this damned world, why him? God_damn_it! He was not supposed to be here!

"What are you doing? What the hell are you doing?" he says, the love of my short, bright life says, my dear Sixsmith. I can't help but feel a small amount of relief that he has come, though.

"I appear to be about to kill myself," I say. I think myself quite clever, but I know it's just the dying man's wit. I drop the Luger, the supposed instrument of my death. I cannot die in front of him. I cannot let him see me like this, "But you seem to have interrupted." He appears in shock.

"Oh, come on, now, we both knew it was to come to this," I say. He grabs my shoulders and pulls me to him. It brings back memories of other places, other times. He releases me.

"How could you do this? Leave the sextet unfinished, leave me and the whole bloody world without a goodbye?" he asks, now sobbing.

"I finished it, Sixsmith. I finished the sextet and I wrote you a goodbye. Here. Take them." I hand him the single accomplishment of my short life and his letter. He pulls me up out of the bathtub.

_Rufus Sixsmith_

"Just wait. Please. Don't do this to me. Just wait," I plead. The eyes that I used to read love and kindness and just a bit of madness in now only show a deep-seated sadness and a hatred so deep it can only be for himself.

He stands, and I tell him to come with me into the other room. He complies, and we sit in the opposing chairs of his small hotel room. I remember fondly the last time I saw him, in a hotel room not much different than this one. He left me there alone, taking my waistcoat and my heart and nothing more from that hotel room. I begin to read the letter: _I shot myself through the roof of the mouth at 5:00 this morning. _I choke on a sob. I continue reading, trying not to let the tears fall on his beautifully scrawled handwriting.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, they say. They don't even know. To a lover, everything about his second half is beautiful, from the comet on his back to his suicidal tendencies to his habits of staying up till one in the morning just writing and writing and writing. _Robert Frobisher is beautiful_, I think, _and no one can take that from him. _He sits across from me, not even speaking. He doesn't have to. _Look at me now, Sixsmith,_ he says without words, _Let me go. _But I cannot. I've never been able to, never been able to let him go. It is wrong, people have said. It is unholy, they tell us with the disgust on their faces. But still I stand by him. Even the last time. I walked in on him clumsily tying a noose. He stood in front of me with a rope around his neck and told me goodbye. I stopped him that time, I can do it again. I'll never be able to let him go. I finish the letter. He sees me crying and doesn't say a word, just smiles his cocky half- smile. He voices what I knew he would say.

_Robert Frobisher_

"Let me go," I say quietly. I know he cannot, but everyone must make sacrifices. I was lying when I told Vyvyan Ayrs that I wrote the sextet thinking of him and I meeting again and again. Nothing beautiful could come from that. But the physicist and the composer, that has a sort of sweeping oddity to it, a lovely sort of ringing beauty. Like the lawyer and the self-freed slave of Ewing and Autua.

"No," he whispers. It makes me want to cry, seeing him like this. I can hardly bear it, seeing my level-headed love dissolve like this. I want to go over to him, to comfort him, but I cannot, it will ruin it. I cannot help myself, the emotional, the artist, the unstable. I go to him. I put my arm around him, tell him I'm sorry. Tell him I have to. Tell him I've accomplished all I can, why live? Because it's true. The Cloud Atlas Sextet isn't just a sextet, no, it's my life, and his life, and everything. It is him and I, sleeping under the Corsican stars, it is Jocasta forcing herself upon me yet again. It is Adam Ewing returning home to meet his love, and everything, it is everything I am and he is and they are. I don't tell him this, though, just stand up and retrieve the Luger from my seat.

"I have to," I say, "And I will." I kiss his forehead, his cheek, his lips. He pulls me to him as if he will never let me go.

_Rufus Sixsmith_

I will never let him go. I hold him to me with all my might, my body shaking with the sobs. I will never let him go. I will never let him go. Not if I die trying.

"I will save you," I say shakily and release him a little.

"No. You can't, my love. I was dead the second you walked in. I finished my life when I finished the sextet. I'm dead. You have to let me go. We all have to make sacrifices, and yours is me. Please," he replies, he, the one thing I love most in all the universe. He is going to leave me. I can't stop him. But I can never let him go. I will have to die trying. I will die today in my lover's arms, and he in mine. I let him go from my arms, but he stays close. I will let him go from my life, but we will be together.

"Th-then let me do it with you. I cannot live in a world without you, Robert. I can't let you die alone, and I can't let you go. I- I have to die with you," I say.

"No, no, no, you can't. I cannot bear the thought of you dying any more than I can bear the thought of living. Why can't you just let me go? You've let me go, let me leave a thousand times, why not now? You were never the stubborn type, but desperate times, I suppose. You're pulling out all the guns. I'd think you of all people would recognize a losing battle," he says. My love is hell-bent on dying, I will go with him. If you can't beat em', join em', they say. For once they're right.

"You can't change my decision any more than I can change yours. We go together or not at all."

"Together or not at all," he echoes, "This is the single hardest thing I've ever done. I hope you know that."

"I know. This is hard for me too. But we can do anything together."

"My dear Sixsmith, after all the goodbyes, I do believe this is the last one. Let's make it good. It's not too early. Breakfast?" he says, and proffers his arm.

_Robert Frobisher_

My love takes my arm, takes my heart, takes me. We walk out of the hotel room, take a short detour to the manager's office to grab the letter, and we walk out, though now we must be just business associates talking of money over breakfast. We choose a quaint little café on a side street. We talk of everything that's happened. We are serious, we laugh. We recall the good, the bad, and the hilarious. We talk of when my dear Pater expelled me from the Frobishery. We had thought that him and Mater were away for the weekend. Evidently not. I had, of course, taken the liberty of contacting Sixsmith and telling him the house would be vacant. He brought some lovely French wines, and, well, misconduct ensued, at least until the door to the bedroom opened and there he was, my furious father. I was told to pack my bags and leave within the hour. He was outside the whole time, throwing little notes up to my window.

_What crawled up your father's ass? _the scrawls asked. He was obviously still quite inebriated.

_Nice birthmark, _and so on and so forth. That was what kept me from breaking down then and there. Him. It was all him, everything I've done. And that's why we need to do this, in his own words, together, or not at all. I put down the last of my money, hopefully enough to cover the bill, and we depart from the café, ready to depart from this life. We go to the hotel room. The manager stops me.

"Mr. Frobisher, checkout's in an hour," the portly cheat says.

"I'm just going to do that now. I do believe I'll check out early, though, if that's alright with you," I reply.

"Of course, Mr. Frobisher. I do hope you'll come back soon," he says, as if he just can't wait for more money, the greedy bastard. We return to our room, sit in the chair, as we had before. I can practically feel Sixsmith's anxiety. I put a hand on his shoulder, he smiles that shy smile of his, and I could never have loved him more than in that moment. He was willing to lay down his own life for me, the disowned composer.

"Are you ready?" I ask.

_Rufus Sixsmith_

_ Not in the least, _I think to myself, _But better to die with and for the one you love to die old and lonely by yourself._

"As I'll ever be," I reply, and sigh.

"Are you sure you really want to go through with this?" he asks me. _No, I'm not, _I want to scream out. But I cannot leave him. Love, the poison of the ages. We all say we will never fall into it, never become mad with admiration for one person, never be content to sit with one person for hours as you talk, but we are all wrong. And now I will kill myself for love, lay down my life for the one person I care most about in all the world. Here we go. Goodbye, earth.

"Yes. I am as sure as the sky is blue, as sure as I love you." _But I'm not, I will never be ready to die._

"I'm nervous too. Don't worry. It'll all be okay soon."

"How are we going to…" I trail off.

"I think that we can do this at the same time, I've got some rope and the Luger. Come into the bathroom," he says. So one of us will hang ourselves and the other will shoot himself. I've always thought that the way you kill yourself is an intense measure of your self-hate. For example, to drown yourself you'd probably hate yourself more than if you, say, shot yourself. Drowning takes longer and goes against every will of human instinct, but shooting springs from humans and is a quick death. We go into the bathroom. He brings the desk's wooden chair next to the tub, and tells me to stand on it. I do so, and he goes to the other room again.

_Robert Frobisher_

_I cannot submit him to this, _I think, _I cannot let him kill himself for me, it would be the same as hanging him myself._ I sit on the bed, feeling the weight of the gun in my hands. I'll have to do it by myself. It's the only way.

"What are you doing in there?" I hear him ask.

"Just trying to find the rope, I might be a moment. You- you just stay there, okay?" I lie, I sigh.

"Okay, just don't take too long, please," he says. The last words I will ever hear him say. Not a very good last goodbye, but it suits him to a tee.

"Rufus Sixsmith, I love you," I say. I put the gun in my mouth. I pull the trigger.

_Rufus Sixsmith_

I hear a bang from the other room. _No, no he can't have he didn't he didn't he didn't no not my Robert he didn't do this to me he can't have he can't have he didn't._ I run into the room only to see that he did. I run to his body and hold him as I did before, clutching him to me as if I will never let him go, but I did, I let him go, he let himself go. I can't believe he did this to me, I can't believe it. But I can, and that's the problem. Everyone sees their lover as perfect, but once again everyone is wrong. I sob into his shirt, still can't let him go, never let him go.

"How could you do this to me?" I scream into him, "How could you leave me here alone?" _He did it because he loved me, didn't he? He did this because he thought he was doing me a favor, letting me live because he couldn't bear to see me die. _Don't let them say I killed myself for love,_ he said in his letter to me, and I won't. Even though he did, I won't tell anyone, I won't be able to. _I let him go, let his empty shell fall onto the bed, his blood staining the bedding. I take the gun from his hand. Never shot anything in my life. There's a first time for everything. I sit on the bed next to my lover's corpse, open the gun. Still one bullet left. I shut it again, lay down on the bed next to him for the last time, kiss his forehead, his blood on my lips. I put the gun to my head.

"Together or not at all, Robert. You said it yourself," I say, and pull the trigger.


End file.
